


Long Live--Part 5

by LaVieEnRose



Series: Long Live [5]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: CF, Chronic Illness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sickfic, cystic fibrosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:42:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27927706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: No one:Absolutely no one:Absolutely no one who has ever lived:Me: What if I rewrite the entire series but give Justin cystic fibrosisSeason 5.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Long Live [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015032
Comments: 24
Kudos: 116





	Long Live--Part 5

LA does, in fact, fit Justin like a glove.

The pollution sucks, sure, but the hot air is blissful on his lungs, and for the first time in his life he had his own car—leased, but who’s counting—where he can keep all his supplies. He even had a hookup to plug his nebulizer into the cigarette lighter. He loves his new doctor, loves the salt water taste in his mouth when he stands by the sea, loves learning to surf and salsa dance and bake and take care of himself.

He has his own apartment. His. Own. Apartment. He decorates it in teals and pinks and soft linens and reclaimed wood. He fills it with medical supplies and half-finished canvases. He soaks in the bathtub for hours on end.

And the work. God, the work. Sure, it’s a little chintzy, not quite the fine art of Justin’s dreams, but the pay is amazing, his efforts are recognized, and people twice his age take orders from him like he’s an expert. He goes to clubs after work and falls in bed every night tired to the bone and wakes up every morning...well, tired to the bone, he’s still him, but also he’s invigorated, like someone’s turned on a motor inside of him.

The only downside, of course, is the constant, throbbing stomachache that Brian isn’t here.

He misses him so badly that he spends most of the first week either working so he won’t think about Brian or crying when he cannot help thinking about Brian. He calls him often, and Brian makes fun of him but calls him just as much, once because Brian catches a cold and wakes up in the middle of the night coughing and tries to explain, half-asleep at half-past three, that he thought it was a psychic vibration from across the country. The second week he buys a ticket to come out at the end of the month, and that does a lot to calm Justin down. Just having something concrete to look forward to.

Brian shows up without a hair out of place, and Justin, ironically, feels like he's seeing a movie star. He can't wait to show Brian his Very Own Apartment, wants Brian to be proud of him, to roll his eyes at his decorating sensibilities but to recognize that he _has_ decorating sensibilities, that he has opinions outside of dark wood and cold steel. But, of course, the apartment tour has to wait, because they're out of their clothes before they're even fully through the front door. They fuck in the kitchen, and in the living room, and in the bed part of his living room, and, well, that's all there is to the apartment, so they fuck in all those places a bit more and finally rest in bed, Brian brushing Justin's hair off his forehead. 

“You look very healthy all tan,” Brian says. “I'm used to you looking a princess I keep in a tower.”

“I know. No one here believes I'm sick.”

“Well.” Brian props himself up on an elbow. “Don't love that.”

“Relax, relax, I'm safe. Taking good care of myself.”

Brian looks around the apartment for the first time, and he smiles, not in a way that moves his mouth, but the way that crinkles the fine lines around his eyes Justin has to swear to him he doesn't have, and God, God. Justin loves him so much. 

“I have so much I want to show you,” Justin says.

“So show me.”

**

It's an incredible feeling, showing Brian his town. Brian's been to LA before, but only for 24-hour business trips in hotels connected to LAX. Justin takes him to his favorite pho hole in the wall, the frozen yogurt shop, feeds him LA's poor excuse for pizza. He takes him to the beach and screams when Brian throws him in the ocean. He introduces him to his friends at the studios, brings him to an orgy so wild it makes _Brian_ wide-eyed, which thrills him to no end, and then they get margarita drunk on Justin's fire escape and look out over his mediocre view of this beautiful city.

And Justin thinks about telling him. That he's not sure he wants to come back to Pittsburgh. That he's not sure what's there for him, besides familiarity, besides Brian. 

He thinks about asking the question. 

But he doesn't want to ruin the moment, this sunset, this man.

“Look at you,” Brian says softly.

Justin smiles at him.

“Fifty years from now your name's gonna be in the credits of that movie,” Brian says.

“I know. I'm gonna live forever.”

**

So, of course, the movie is canceled a month later. 

It's a heartbreak like nothing he's never experienced, save losing Leo. He spends the last few days he has in his apartment hiding under the covers and willing himself not to go out to the fire escape and think about how happy he was here with Brian, how much he's going to miss that fucking shitty view. 

And then he packs all his shit and moves back to Pittsburgh, where it's already starting to get cold.

Of course he's beyond happy to be back with Brian, to sleep next to him at night and know that there's no ticking clock, besides the usual, anyway, but underneath all of that is this deep depression he can't seem to shake. He tries to act normal, but he knows Brian notices and worries. He considers going back to therapy, but what is there to talk about? He loved something and now he doesn't have it. He was a part of something bigger than himself and now he isn't. The thought of going back to school is laughable. Why did he think he had that time to waste? What did he think he was going to learn in a classroom that he couldn't learn out there working, doing, living?

Meanwhile, Brian buys Babylon, so that's a whole thing. 

The truth is, after his first few weeks in LA, Justin didn't go to clubs that much. He'd go to parties with his coworkers and fuck around there, but he didn't go looking for tricks like he and Brian used to at home. It's not that he didn't want to, it's just that...he didn't want to _enough_ for how exhausting it was, for the inescapable worry of whether or not it was going to go south, for the time he was giving up that he could have been resting, sleeping, painting. 

But now he's back it Pittsburgh, and now his partner owns the hottest back room in Pittsburgh, so everything's the same as it was. 

But Justin isn't.

**

It just keeps getting colder. Justin drags himself out of diner after his shift to meet Brian in the VIP room and ends up just collapsing on his couch and coughing. Like the old days at Kinnetik. Same story, different rooms.

Brian waits for him to be done and then nudges him with a box of tissues and says, “I have terrible news.”

Justin spits into the tissue and says, “Is it that I'm coughing up blood again, because then you stole my terrible news.”

“It is not. It's much worse.”

“Mmm.” Justin wipes his mouth. “What's up?”

“We have to have dinner with Michael and the professor tomorrow,” Brian says. “I couldn’t get out of it.”

Justin blows his nose. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Yeah, except they’re inviting their fucking heteronormative friends.”

“Ben and Michael have straight friends?”

“They’re not straight,” Brian says. “They’re heteronormative.”

“Let people live their lives, Brian,” Justin says dramatically, flopping back on the couch.

“Literally never.”

“This place could use some cooler light,” Justin says. “These bulbs are a little yellow.” In LA he had blue bulbs in all his lamps. He felt like he was under the sea. 

“No,” Brian says. “It’s perfect.”

**

They have an argument right before they leave for Michael and Ben’s, when Justin can’t find his saline solution for the nebulizer because he left it out and Brian put it away and doesn’t remember where. Justin doesn’t get why Brian has to move everything, and Brian doesn’t understand why, if Justin is going to be so particular about where his stuff is, he doesn’t just put it back where it belongs.

“Why can’t it belong out in the open where I can use it, since I use it _all the time._ “

“Why is asking you to open a cabinet and get it out first some macro insult to the entire disability community?”

They find it, eventually, but not in enough time for Justin to do a treatment before they leave, so he’s stuffed-up and uncomfortable in the car. He curls up in his new jacket—Brian got it for him, to try to get him to stop moping about the cold—and coughs most of the way there.

“Save it for dinner,” Brian says. “We can scare the gaybots into thinking you’re contagious and get out of there early.”

“I’ve told you this before,” Justin says. “The only time we can use my disease for personal gain is when it directly leads to sex.”

“What exactly do you think we’re gonna do when we get out of there, play canasta?”

Justin takes some of the hardcore cough medicine to shut himself up for a few hours, and he’s sounding vaguely uninfectious by the time they get to Michael and Ben’s house, much to Brian’s dismay. Michael and Ben hug and kiss them and usher them into the dining room where they shake hands with their ridiculously attractive friends. Brian's being bratty, circling the room and touching all the hors d'oeuvres, and Justin pours himself a drink and finds himself standing next to Ben. Not quite six feet, but close enough, and Ben, HIV and all, has the constitution of an ox. 

“This house is amazing,” Justin tells him.

“I feel like I can finally stretch my legs,” Ben says. “That apartment was built for someone closer to your size, I think.”

“Ha, ha.” Justin wonders sometimes how tall he'd be if he weren't sick and malnourished his entire life, but it doesn't seem like the time to pontificate on that. “Thank you for having us.”

“You're welcome here any time, you know that.”

They all sit down for dinner, and Eli and Monty are talking about the homeowner's association and something about speed bumps, and not the fun kind, and Justin can admit that it's boring as hell but he's able to keep a smile on his face and jump into the conversation whenever it gets remotely interesting. Brian, on the other hand, checks out right away and just turns himself up to eleven, being the very picture of an overgrown club boy in the middle of a tastefully decorated dining room, but it turns out Eli and Monty think that's hilarious. They marvel at Brian like he's a museum exhibit, and that, of course, turns into marveling at Justin and Brian's nontraditional relationship.

“So you live together,” Eli says, or maybe Monty.

Brian nods and drains his wine glass like it's a whiskey shot. He's on at least his sixth, Justin's lost count. “I don't fuck guys at home too often anymore. Unless we're playing together. Which is a shame because my loft is a fucking den of eroticism. Was supposed to be in a movie, right, Sunshine?”

“Maybe slow down a bit,” Justin says.

“A loft, hmm?” Monty or Eli says. “How cosmopolitan.”

The other one leans forwards and says, “So I assume you two would never find yourselves in a house like this.”

“Please,” Brian scoffs. “It's not who we are.”

“I can speak for myself,” Justin says. 

Everyone looks at him, and Justin resists the urge to shrink into his seat.

“I think it could be really nice, actually,” Justin says. “Having a space that's completely your own. No one telling you what to do. Yeah, I would like that.”

Brian watches him and pours himself another glass of wine.

**

“God,” Brian grouches on the way home, sprawled out in the passenger seat while Justin drives his drunk ass back to the loft. “What fucking bores. Who goes to a dinner party and is like, I think I'll talk about the mortgage.”

“I mean, who goes to a dinner party and says, let's talk about how many guys I fuck a week.”

“Interesting people,” Brian says. He plays with the window for a second, rolling it up and down and up and down, and then says, “I don't know why I'm complaining to you anyway, obviously you're on theeeeeir side.”

“I'm not on anyone's side,” Justin says, pulling into the parking garage. 

“Oooh, I'd love a pretty house.”

“Shut the fuck up, Brian.”

“I'm just wondering what the fuck is up,” Brian says, fumbling with his seatbelt before he gets out of the car. “Everything was fine and now what, you want a McMansion for all your toys?”

“No,” Justin says. “That is not what I want.”

They're quiet in the ride in the elevator, and when they get up to the loft, Justin starts for the bathroom without a glance at Brian.

“Oh, come on!” Brian says, and Justin stops. “Just fucking tell me why your balls are in a twist so we can fuck and go to bed.”

And something inside of Justin snaps. Something inside him can not take not knowing anymore.

He turns around and said, “Would you have moved to LA?”

Brian shakes his head like he's clearing it. “What?”

“If the movie hadn't been canceled. If I'd stayed in LA. Would you have moved out there with me?”

“You were going to stay in LA?”

“I was thinking about it.” He shakes his head. “I loved it out there. I was finally doing something by myself, and doing it _well._ People respected me. Looked up to me. Of course I wanted to stay.” 

“We...you have a life here,” Brian says. “I have a life here. I can't just pick up and go across the fucking country.”

“You wanted to know what I want?” Justin says. “This. This is what I want.”

“Me to move to LA?”

This is all moving too fast, like a train barreling downhill, and Justin doesn't think he can stop it. “You to be willing to give up something. Anything. All I have done since we've gotten together is shrink myself down to fit into your life. I move into this loft that is so clearly not made for two people, we hang out with your friends, we go out every night because that's what you want to do, we fuck around because that's what you want to do—” 

“You've never told me you didn't want these things.”

“It's not that I don't want them, it's just...they're _yours._ Our entire life is yours, and I'm here as a fucking...accessory.”

“You know I want you here,” Brian says softly.

“Yes. I know that you want me as long as I fit neatly into your life.”

Brian licks his lips and says, “Okay. I'm not saying I would never move out there with you, okay?”

Justin watches him.

“But we...I can't just fucking say yeah, I would do that. There's so much to think about—”

“I'm not asking you to pack a fucking bag, I'm just—”

“This is new to me!” Brian bursts. “I've never done all this fucking relationship shit and now you want me to leave my whole fucking life? I need _time._ ”

 _“Well, I don't have time!”_ Justin explodes.

It rings in the air, hangs there.

“I can't just stand around waiting for you to be ready to build a life together with me instead of cramming me into the one you already have,” Justin says. “I do not have time for that. There isn't time.”

Brian looks away.

“I'm not going to piss away what I have feeling like a guest,” Justin says, and he can't believe he's saying it. “You told me once how small I am. I'm done. I'm done being small.”

**

Justin moves in with Michael and Ben the next day. A guest once again. Same story, different rooms.

He has absolutely no idea what’s going on with him and Brian, if this is a break up or just some sort of physical separation, and he is far too chickenshit to ask. Brian fucks him the morning he leaves and drives him to Ben and Michael’s, but he doesn’t kiss him goodbye or offer anything reassuring on his way out. Justin isn’t even sure if he wants him to, except for the fact that he wants him to so badly it’s like he’s being stabbed.

He’s as unobtrusive as he can be living with Michael and Ben, and after two weeks he finds a small studio apartment that will use up as little of his Hollywood money as possible. He goes back to work at the diner and saves all the money he can, and he keeps a picture of the Los Angeles skyline taped over his leaky sink so he can remember what this is all for. He’s going to get out of here.

Meanwhile, he phone banks to try to block this homophobic as fuck proposition the government’s trying to pass, paints, does his treatments, and largely keeps to himself. He goes to Babylon a few times, but every time he does he ends up having sex with Brian, who is always there, and then he goes home and cried and it’s just easier to stay away. He tells himself that’s a healthy decision.

Lindsay sets him up with an art dealer friend of hers who organizes a small show for him, and Justin paints some new pieces and actually ends up with some he's pretty proud of, despite the depression threatening to eat him alive. Brian comes up to him at the show, and it reminds Justin so starkly of another night three years ago, men in flames and Brian in a top hat then instead of society queers and Brian's disheveled button down now, but that same feeling of uncertainty about what he and Brian were, and the corresponding certainty that they were, and would always be, _something._

They've been through too much now, too much scandal and heartbreak and illness and espionage. They've melted themselves down and reformed twisted around each other, or maybe it's just Justin twisted around Brian, and isn't that just the problem?

But still. Stuck.

“Want to go outside?” Brian says, and Justin nods. 

Once again, they're on a loading dock, and once again, Brian bitches that he wants a cigarette. Justin sits down and lets the air wash over him like water. He thinks about the Pacific ocean.

He says, accidentally, “Do you think some people are made to be happy and some people just aren't?”

“Yes.”

He swings his feet and looks out on the city. “I wish I knew which kind of person I was.”

A pause, and then Brian says, “I wish you did, too.”

**

Melanie and Lindsay are organizing a fundraiser against Proposition 14, and Brian volunteers Babylon as the spot, even though he says he 'unfortunately won't be able to attend.' That makes Justin feel a little bit safer going, at least; if Brian were there, he knows they'd end up in the back room, good cause or no good cause. 

Cyndi Lauper is onstage, the lights are blinding, Justin's feeling good and drinking heartily and talking to absolutely everyone who is not Brian, but everyone keeps asking him about where Brian is. People who know they've broken up know that Justin is still the person to ask about Brian, and it hurts like a burn. 

“He's going to Australia,” Justin says over and over. He didn't want to be here. He couldn't stand to be in the same huge, huge room as Justin, and Justin doesn't blame him. Some days he can run into Brian at the diner and have a pleasant conversation. Other days it feels like if Brian's name is so much as mentioned his skin will catch on fire. 

He's thinking this, about his skin catching on fire, when Babylon explodes.

**

Justin's only unconscious for a moment, but he asks himself the same question he does every time he wakes up.

_Are you breathing?_

He stares up at small fires and smoking beams, fizzing electrical cords, the wreckage of a place he used to feel alive.

He puts his hand on his chest, inhales.

_I'm breathing._

He won't be for long if he stays in here, though, he knows that. But Babylon is a maze now; people who can get out are rushing the doors, people who can't are screaming that they're hurt, trapped, dying. 

People are dying.

He looks around for his mother, first and foremost, but he can't make out anything more than a few feet from him through the layers of grit in the air. He grabs the arm of the woman on the floor next to him. “Are you okay?” he says. “Can you get up?”

“I-I think so.”

“I'll help you, come on,” he says, and they stand up together. 

She says, “My girlfriend was here...”

“We'll find her.”Justin puts his hands on his knees and catches his breath.

“Are you okay?” the girl says.

“I’m fine.” And he is, but he knows he won’t be for long. He needs to help people and he needs to get the fuck out of here, and they both need to happen really quickly.

“My mother is here,” Justin says. “I need to make sure she’s okay...” His mind feels like it’s simultaneously going too fast and too slow. He doesn’t know why he’s so calm. He doesn’t know what the fuck just happened, but he can still feel it echoing in his ears.

“Oh my God, I think that guy’s—”

“You need to get out of here,” Justin says. “Come on.”

He holds her hand, and they weave through wreckage, bodies on the floor, scraps of bloody clothes and burnt beams. A light falls from the ceiling and crashes a few feet away from them, and the girl screams.

“It’s okay,” Justin says, his throat burning. “Everything’s okay.”

He gets her to the door finally, to the throng of people struggling to escape, and through the bodies he can just make out flashing red lights in the parking lot. “Fire trucks are here,” he says. “See, we’re all going to be fine.” He tries to leave her and turn back, but she grabs his arm.

“Where are you going?”

“My mom isn’t here,” he says. “She’s probably looking for me, I have to find her.” She'll put herself in danger, rooting around flaming ruins to try to find him. He leans against the remains of a wall to catch his breath.

“I think you need oxygen.”

“I'm okay. Go.”

She does, reluctantly, and Justin leaves all his instincts at the door and dives back into the wreckage. He helps people off the floor, tears his shirt to tie over someone's wound, but he's aware of how thick the air is now and it's getting caught at the tops of his lungs. 

He yells his mother's name, points a screaming man towards the door, ducks as a beam falls and the air fills with dust and he chokes, coughs, thinks he hears someone calling his name.

Thinks he recognizes the voice.

And then there's another crash, a shower of sparks, and out of the darkness comes Brian. He moves to Justin and pulls him into his arms all in one motion, and Justin doesn't know how he's ever going to let go. At first it's not even that it's Brian, it's just that it's _anyone,_ anybody from real life who can get him out of this nightmare, and then...and then it's that it's Brian, and he's holding them, and Justin himself could be on fire and that would still feel like something important.

But he wrenches away suddenly to cough until his vision blacks out. Brian holds him up, keeps him from falling. He's talking, asking Justin if he's okay, checking him for injuries, but Justin can't focus on anything but trying to get all this fucking shit out of his lungs, and it's not working, it's just getting worse and worse.

“Jesus Christ,” Brian says. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

“M-my mother,” Justin chokes out eventually.

“She's outside, she's fine, she has twenty firemen holding her back to keep her from running in looking for you. We need to get you out of here, _now._ ”

It's very tempting just to lie down on the floor and go to sleep instead. 

_”Justin,”_ Brian says. 

Justin draws in a rattling breath. “This is bad.” 

“Come with me,” Brian says, and he bundles Justin under his arm and ushers him towards the door, pushing him out of the way when he almost trips on one of the bodies on the floor. “Come on, come on, come on,” he says, maybe to Justin, maybe to himself. “Breathe. Breathe.”

He's trying, but it's getting so goddamn hard, each breath taking longer and longer than the last to get out of him, and by the time they get out of Babylon it barely matters that he's out of the dust and the smoke. He stumbles, thinks he sees his mother, but Brian ushers him straight to one of the ambulances and presses an inhaler into his hand.

“Asthma?” a paramedic says, getting oxygen ready.

“Cystic fibrosis,” Brian says. “He needs help, he...”

There's a mask in Justin's hand, and then over his face, and it feels familiar and safe but he feels so, so sick, and he closes his eyes and tries to breathe and ends up ripping off the mask to cough mouthfuls of ashes to the ground. He sputters and gasps and tries to breathe, and Brian holds the mask back over his face.

Justin feels everything starting to go fuzzy, and he says, “Brian—”

“I know,” Brian says. “Go to sleep, it's okay.”

He's pretty sure that Brian could tell anything in that voice and he would do it.

But sleeping is particularly easy.

**

He wakes up in a hospital bed, hardly the first time he's fainted somewhere and ended up here, but he feels substantially worse than he usually does. There's an oxygen mask over his face and a bandage on his arm just above his IV. He starts coughing, suddenly, and someone goes “Shh shh shh,” and hands him a cup of water. 

“Brian,” he croaks.

“They said try not to cough for a little while. I know that's a tall order. You have burns in your throat.”

“S'posed to cough.”

“In a little while, someone's going to help you.”

Justin nods a little and struggles to sit up, and Brian presses the button on the bed to tilt it up. “Where's everyone?” Justin says.

“Your mom's asleep out in the waiting room.”

“Michael, Ted, Emmett?”

“Ted and Emmett are okay,” Brian says.

“Brian?”

Brian takes a deep breath. “Michael had surgery. They said he's waking up now.”

“Oh God.”

Brian looks away.

“Brian, you should go,” Justin says. “Go be with him. He's waking up, he'll want you.”

Brian shakes his head and takes Justin's hand, still not looking quite at him.

“I'm in your world right now,” he says.

**

The next morning, Justin sits in his armchair in the hospital and breathes oxygen and reads newspaper stories about bombs and hate groups and eleven dead queers. He has a hard time anything besides feeling sick and kind of numb. He doesn't know the people who died. He doesn't know how he got out alive. 

Nothing makes any goddamn sense, which isn't alleviated when Brian strolls in with two cups of coffee. He hands one to Justin and sits down on the bed, watching him. “You got downgraded to the cannula, that's good.”

Justin touches the tube in his nose. “Yeah. They said I can go home tomorrow or the next day.”

“Really dodged a bullet there.”

Justin holds up the newspaper. “In more ways than one.”

They don't say anything for a moment, because what the fuck is there to say, but eventually Brian clears his throat and says, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Will you marry me?”

Justin blinks, freezes, laughs, coughs. Brian waits patiently.

“I'm sorry. What?”

“Will you marry me?” Brian says again.

“We're not...even together.”

“We're not not together.”

“Brian.”

Brian groans and flops back on the bed, like he's the patient. “Okay, so maybe I'm pondering mortality, maybe I'm thinking that life is short and yours is shorter and who's to say we won't just blow up at any moment regardless, maybe I'm thinking of all those things you've said at the loft and I'm as sick of myself as you are, is that a crime?”

“You're panicking,” Justin says. “You think I almost died so you're freaking out and trying to hold me.”

“I am not freaking out.”

“You're freaking out. You hate marriage. You hate the entire concept of marriage.”

“Yes, but I like you.”

Justin gives him a look.

“Oh, it'll take like twenty minutes,” Brian says. “Then we get drunk and fuck all the ushers.”

Justin coughs and rubs his chest. “I love you. You know I love you.”

“However...”

“However. This is insane and you're in shock, and getting married is not the solution.”

Brian pouts. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

Justin says, “I just want to feel like I belong somewhere. Preferably with you. That doesn't mean you need to throw away your entire fucking manifesto.”

“Well, I don't know how to do that.”

“Neither do I.”

Brian thinks, then says, “Can we make out, at least?”

“Yeah, come here.”

**

Justin gets out of the hospital and goes back to his shitty apartment and tries to make sense of what remains of his life. He tries to imagine telling that scared seventeen-year-old, walking into the loft for the first time: this man is going to ask you to marry him.

And you're going to say no.

When really the truth is, of course he wants to marry Brian. He just wants to do so much more with Brian _besides_ marry him. He wants to travel the world. He wants to make a home of their own. He wants to grow as old as he can get with Brian next to him, and of course the marriage makes that sound guaranteed, but Brian is in shock. Once the dust settles, figuratively, literally, he's going to look around and wonder what the fuck he did and try to sprint into the distance, and Justin isn't sure he can take that. 

He's in his apartment a few days later, painting something beautiful and sad, when Brian waltzes in like he owns the place. (He has a key. Of course Justin gave him a key.)

“Get in the car,” Brian says.

Justin looks down at his paint-stained clothes.

“Don't care,” Brian says. “Car, now.”

They drive for about half an hour in relative but comfortable quiet. Justin listens to the soft music Brian likes and watches the scenery turn from city to country outside his window. “You should have told me to take a Claritin,” Justin bitches at one point, and Brian rolls his eyes and opens the glove box and throws one at him.

They pull up to the driveway of a gorgeous mansion, ivy on the walls, cobblestones leading up to the double front door. “Holy shit,” Justin says. “Who lives here?”

Brian holds the door open for him. “You do.”

Justin stares at him.

“And me,” Brian says, shyer than Justin has ever seen him. “If you want me to.”

Justin walks into an unfurnished living room and spins around slowly, taking in the chandelier, the fireplace, the ornate wallpaper. “Brian...”

“You said you wanted a place of your own,” he says. “A place for us to start a life.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a two-bedroom.”

“Justin,” Brian says.

“Yeah.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Justin laughs, softly, doesn't know what else to do. “Did you really buy this?”

Brian nods.

“You've never even gotten me a Christmas present.”

Brian runs his hand over the mantle. “Consider this back pay for the last four years.”

“You can't just buy a house.”

“Why? I bought a club,” Brian says, which is a pretty good point, the fate of that club notwithstanding. 

“But you...”

Brian holds his arms out. “I'm doing the grand gesture! And instead of a gesture, it's something you actually want, and I would say need, given that shithole you're currently calling a home.”

“But you love the loft.”

“I love other things too.”

“You're still in shock, this—”

“Justin.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want this house?”

Justin feels his breath catch in his throat, and he nods.

“Do you want me in it with you?”

“God, Brian, of course.”

“Marry me,” he says softly. “Let me keep you safe.”

Justin bites his lip, considers his life, considers what it would feel like to be kept safe, even if it's just for a little while. 

He wonders whether or not he deserves this.

And then he realizes that he doesn't care. It doesn't matter if he's earned this or not, if the suffering he's endured has balanced out being gifted a mansion and a husband on some great cosmic scale. Fuck deserving. This isn't an ethics question; this is just what _is,_ these high ceilings and hardwood floors and this beautiful man, standing there, waiting. 

He can just say yes.

He can just allow himself to say yes.

“Yes.”

**

And so they plan a wedding. Nothing too large or formal, but of course, ridiculously extravagant, with drinks poured all night, served by gorgeous men poured into their suits. They cut the guest list down to the absolute essentials and spend the money on champagne and and a ballroom with chandeliers. 

It's all ridiculously perfect, if a little fast and dreamlike and absurd, until one day when Brian needs to check a deposit for something and he opens up Justin's laptop. “Aw, it's LA,” he says, when he sees the desktop background.

“Mmmhmm.”

A pause, and then, “Justin?”

“Yeah?”

“You have tabs open for apartments.”

“Oh.” Justin comes over to the couch. “Those are old. From before...everything.”

“You were looking at apartments in LA?”

“Not seriously. It's not like I can afford anything besides, like, the shittiest shithole.”

“Well, I would help with that,” Brian says absently. “But I didn't know you were serious about it.”

“Like I said,” Justin says. “It was before.”

Brian turns to him. “What would you do out there?”

Justin shrugs a little. “Brett says he could get me a job painting sets. It's not much, but it's an in. And I'd have time to work on my own stuff.”

Brian watches him.

Justin squirms. “But like I said. Before.”

“And now what are you going to do?”

“I can paint here.”

“This is Pittsburgh,” Brian says. “How the fuck far are you going to go in Pittsburgh? What are you going to learn, you're going to go back to school?”

“Okay, no, but...”

“Fuck,” Brian says. “Fuck.” 

“Brian?”

“Sunshine,” Brian says softly. 

“I don't need to go to LA,” Justin says, his heart beating fast.

“You loved it there.” 

“I....I can go to LA later.”

“When?” Brian says gently. 

Justin feels his chin shake. “I don't know.”

Brian gets up and holds him.

**

It all happens pretty quickly after that. Ballrooms are cancelled, plane tickets are bought, an apartment Brian decides won't give him tetanus is leased.

Justin stands at the doorway of the loft, maybe for the last time.

“You're going to come, right?” Justin says.

Brian nods. “When I can.” He makes himself smile a little. “I made a promise, remember?”

“I remember.” Justin takes as deep a breath as he can. “But if you don't come, if you don't get there in time, if this is the last—”

“Cut it out.”

“No, I need to say this.” Justin swallows. “Sell my paintings. As many of them as you can. Use my sob story if you have to.”

Brian nods slowly.

“Check on my mother. Make sure she's okay. And...when Gus sees pictures of me. Tell him my name, okay? Tell him that I loved him?”

“I will,” Brian says softly.

Justin trails his hand up Brian's arm, feeling. Remembering. His first night here, how scared he was. How fragile he thought he was. How he told Brett that he would put up with anything from Brian because he needed him. 

He doesn't feel that way anymore. He will be devastated if Brian doesn't come to LA. He will be heartbroken.

But he will survive. For as long as he possibly can, he will survive.

“I had the time of my life dying with you,” Justin says.

Brian smiles. “I know.”

**

Two weeks later, there's a knock on the door of Justin's apartment, and there he is, disheveled with a suitcase.

“You know that promise I made?” Brian says, out of breath. “That I'll be there when you're dying?”

Justin gapes at him. “Yes?”

“Well, if you think about it, you're kind of dying every day, so—”

Justin kisses him as hard as he's ever done anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO much to Calliesky, Julie, Hannah, and Cher for supporting this fic!! You can follow me at twitter.com/LaVieEnRose if you like.
> 
> \--
> 
> Since I know you all are going to ask... _what happens to Justin?_
> 
> And the truth is, I don't know. I planned until the end of this story and that's it. But I can tell you a few things:
> 
> \--Justin's obsession with age 28 isn't quite accurate. That includes people who died as infants or children. Since Justin's already survived to his early twenties, his chances of making it to his thirties and beyond are quite good.  
> \--This year, a drug came out called Trikafta, which is being hailed as a cystic fibrosis miracle drug. It's a big deal.  
> \--They're Brian and Justin. It's only time.


End file.
